Oprah Giving Away Women & Money!

By cwaltersFebruary 13, 2008

Now you don’t have to dress up in corporate casual-wear and spend half the day screaming in a studio audience to get something free from Oprah, because for the next day she’s giving away digital versions of Suze Orman’s new book “Women & Money” on her website, from now until 8/7c February 14th. Downloads are available in English and Spanish versions, PDF only.

So what can you expect from the book? Here’s the meat of Publishers Weekly’s review on Amazon:

Though her explanation of the “8 qualities of a wealthy woman” (harmony, balance, courage, etc.) is more inspirational than practical, she also presents a concrete five-month “save yourself plan” for financial repair, starting with setting aside checking and savings accounts, fixing one’s credit rating, saving for retirement, setting up a will and purchasing home insurance. This encouraging guide will not intimidate women who are foundering financially.

I got this book last year and there was some sort of deal with ameritrade (so maybe that is what you mean?), anyhow, you open an account and put in 50 for one year and hten get a 100 dollar bonus plus whatever interest. I like 100 dollars.

That’s Suze Orman who has a couple of software products to help you easily pull your credit score (it doesn’t cost more than really going out to FICO and doing it yourself, but it has pretty packaging and other tools). She also has an ‘important personal documents’ kit (living will, etc).

She wrote a very good book called ‘Young, Fabulous & Broke’ a few years ago that was very helpful to me in giving me straight up advice on how to eliminate my debt, improve my credit and basically get my ass in gear.

I eliminated $30,000 in debt in 4 years (I now have no credit card debt and pay in full each month) with the help of her advice.

She may be commercial and the advice may be available everywhere you look, but it doesn’t make the advice worth less and her target audience is going to pay attention. Paying attention is important.

She says some crazy things (save money by paying in dollar bills, don’t use spare change, then you’ll trick yourself into saving money?), but if you’re as far gone as some people on Oprah are, you NEED HELP, and Orman is your gal.

I sometimes wonder if Suze Orman uses that loud, preachy voice even in her private life, as I have never heard her without it, but her financial advice is pretty sound. She is sponsored by FICO, and probably spends too much time harping about improving your FICO score. I don’t think that makes her a dreadful corporate shill.

So, if you’re male, is a sex change the only way to take advantage of this great offer? Do women really spend that much differently than men? Maybe this book is just full of hot financial tips like “Invest your weekly savings into a high-yield savings account instead of spending it on breast implants or that Lifetime Movie DVD boxset you’ve been yearning for! You can also save big by foregoing that monthly visit to the salon and keeping the same hairstyle you’ve had since 1986. Just like me!”

Suze cut a deal with the FICO companies that paid her millions. You can see the details in a movie called “Maxed Out”. She is a crook that gives bad advice to people only when it helps her pocket. Dont trust a word she says.

@backbroken: What about saving for retirement? Where to you put your money in your 401k? There’s dozens of little things, like how much do I save for a rainy day? Is a home equity loan a good thing or bad? Etc, etc.

Of course what did I notice first? Something about Oprah? No. Something about what Suze Orman does? Not really. Something about the potential contents of the book? No. Something about it being free? No.

“They photoshopped out her oompa loompa tan!”

As for her general advice, I usually find her a bit spend-happy. That, if you can’t afford it, you can’t afford it; but if you can, screw needing it–spend!

Anyone else having trouble with that link to the PDF download page? Every time I try to load it Firefox crashes completely. I’m running the latest version (just got another update this morning in fact) and I don’t have a bunch of custom plugins or anything. I don’t think I’ve run into another webpage yet that crashes my browser so thoroughly.

I have this book. No, seriously. Back during the holidays, Michelangelo Signorile on Sirius OutQ was giving away book bundles for answering an easy trivia question. I was unable to get through to the book bundle on religion and the state (damn it), but I was easily the first caller for the women’s book bundle, which included this one. (I wonder why nobody else called in …) So, I won the book. Of course, I don’t want it. But I don’t want to throw it away. If anybody wants a free hard copy version, let me know.

@chiieddy: My impression from watching about 15 minutes of her on TV is that Orman does financial advice in soundbites, which is well and good for the unwashed masses who can’t get the “don’t spend what you don’t have” concept.

If this book is more of the “Financial concepts for dummies” type of book, then I guess its a different audience than I anticipated.

I’m sorry, I call bullshit. To someone highly educated about money, her advice may seem like common sense. But to an average person mired in debt, with parents that never taught them how to balance a checkbook, she is very compelling I’m sure. She puts financial jargon into words anyone can understand and makes it relate to the audience.

I have mad respect for Suze and I wish I could engineer a career the way she has.

@bdslack: I met her in person at Fair Isaac’s 2003 credit conference in San Diego. At that time she told the audience she “doesn’t usually accept invitations” to keynote industry conferences as that may undermine her credibility. Yet, there she was…

Did anyone read the summary of the Oprah episode? What a downer on Valentine’s Day: abusive douchebag husband controls every aspect of wife’s life, buys a motorcycle instead of paying the mortgage, cancels their life insurance policy and then OFFS HIMSELF, only to have the wife and 4 kids find his body! Wow. Just wow. To paraphrase Eddie Izzard, it’s a level of awfulness that’s so over the top, you don’t get enraged when you hear about; you just stand in awe.

I bought one of her earlier books, 9 Steps to Financial Freedom about 5 years ago (I bought it used), and since then I’ve gone from about $10,000 in low interest checking to about 10 times that net worth, and it grows every month. I credit this admittedly modest financial getting of my shit together to Suze Orman to a large extent. Yes the advice is very simple and the intended audience is broad (you don’t make money on books for a narrow adudience) but it seems to work. No, it’t not really for the kind of people who are regulars on Consumerist, but it is where savy earners/consumers START. However, I haven’t bought another book by her. Instead I skim them in the bookstore because she re-hashes her advice for different niches each year or so, young people, women, etc.

But she is very inspiring and compelling. I think most importantly, she sees individuals with money problems as just that. People, with a problem that can be fixed.

@IrisMR: I generally like her and her ideas. But last year, I watched her Women and Money seminar on PBS. It seemed as if she was trying to hatch an escape plan for women in marriages. And while that might be necessary for some women, for other women it might be undermining. “Every women should have a savings account of her own, just in case..”

My marriage has an open-book policy when it comes to finances, besides 401(k) we don’t have any private accounts. Other marriages may operate differently and that’s a personal choice for each couple.

Her stuff means nothing to someone on a limited income thanks to disability or *shudder* welfare. There are asset limits and other barriers the Powers That Is put in place to keep those on the limited incomes there.We’re still trying to repair our credit from a hit two and a half years ago, but the debt brokers just do the run around thang. We don’t even know who we should pay because no one has offered proof of ownership of the account. I even tried to get a secured credit card in my name and my bank gave me the run around and told me to buy a GIC instead. And now we’re househunting and all of a sudden, credit reports are all over the place. I don’t think we’ll find an ideal place. We’ll be stuck in a shanty while the male half works his ass off to get us ahead. The difference between solvency and credit ruin is less than 3000$ and it is driving me batty!

Anyone who creates a book titled “The Courage to Be Rich: Creating a Life of Material and Spiritual Abundance,” is not someone I want to read. I associate promoting “courage” with things like, “the courage to do the right thing.” Then there’s the mindset of someone who puts “material and spirtual abundance” in the same phrase.

Regardless, I’m not telling anyone NOT to read it. I’m simply stating how I view it.

@zouxou: Fair enough, just be aware that ‘sort of person’ can be construed in many different ways in this case (woman, lesbian, wealthy person, person who is employed by xxx company or person who wrote a hokey book about courage).

I have one of her earlier books, The Laws of Money, The Lessons of Life and it is what kept me from doing anything completely stupid with my finances. They’re not absolutely perfect, but I am now getting into a position to get out of debt.

As to “why focus on women?” I think she makes some valid points in the book on the emotional associations that women make with regards to money and finances. Her basic financial advise is not new, but she’s got great insights on how women specifically tend to view the whole issue of personal finance.

I’ve always known what the “right” thing is to do financially, but her books and show have really helped me personally overcome a lot of psychological obstacles with regard to money. I can really connect with her idea of “people, then money, then things” because it gets to the heart of so many of the reasons I made stupid decisions with money in the past. I was afraid to put my own financial interests ahead of all the things in my life I thought I needed.

I’m not saying that all women will have the same issues or the same perspective, but I’ve known enough who do to make me feel that this book is worthwhile for its audience.

Reading over it last night, I did find the info on IRAs vs RothIRAs useful, and the comparison of those to typical retirement accounts. The beginning chapter on asking for raises and earning to your full potential didn’t really apply to me, as I’m in academia and you’re pretty much on a set path once you accept your beginning salary, at least for a few years. She did acknowledge these types of jobs at some point in the chapter, so at least there is a realization that everyone doesn’t work in that kind of business world.

@missdona: Although I don’t necessarily have a concern with a spouse (husband or wife) setting aside money of their own, I do have a problem with the way she talked about splitting the total savings between the main account and the woman’s account. If everything were really being fair it would be 2/3 vs. 1/3 or have the funds split into fourths and then each person in the couple have their separate ‘whatever’ money. Otherwise it seems as if you’re putting just as much into your “just in case’ fund as you’re putting into your “marriage” fund. Maybe I’m biased because we have just joint accounts and I make most of the money right now while my husband is in school, but if he were saving $1 for himself for every $1 we saved for us, I’d be a bit bothered.